Bunya pines near the edge of Bunya Mountains National Park

Our Bunya Mountains tour is a relatively new one, developed because:

1. We visited with 6 guests on a customized tour a couple of years ago and loved the forests and peacefulness there.
2. Our name is Araucaria, and althugh we regularly see giant hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) growing naturally in the forests, we don’t see the even more giant bunya pines (A. bidwillii) in the wild on our usual travels – and they really are something to see!

A few days ago we headed off that way on a 2-day  tour with a lovely from Germany who were especially keen to see the bunya forests, and their son who is living in Australia.

So, off we went out west, up the range to Toowoomba, down again to the flat farming country and finally the climb towards the Bunyas.

While enjoying bunya burgers and bunya pies for lunch (made with meat, bunya nuts and some delicious herbs and spices) at Poppies Restaurant, this red-necked wallaby posed for us in front of an Australia flag and an Aboriginal flag, and a kookaburra joined in, sitting in the tree to the left – nice little collection of Australiana for our visitors!

Red-necked wallaby and Australian flags, Bunya Mountains

Silky Oaks Chalet,Bunya Mountain

We all agreed the chalet Silky Oaks (which Darren and I had stayed in with guests on our last visit) was quite delightful. Great views, polished timber floors, bathrooms upstairs and downstairs and fully self-contained.

As soon as we had unpacked our things we  walked across the road and into the forest, beneath towering bunyas, although trying not to stay too long under any of them, as this is the time of year they drop their massive cones.

A tall bunya pine in the national park

Looking up into a bunya

I had been thrown by a horse two weeks earlier when he was startled by a bunya cone falling at home from a tree that was inside our house many years ago decorated for Christmas and is now much taller than the house.

The cones are BIG! Here are a couple that had fallen near the accommodation, one of them open and showing the nuts that are so important to the Aboriginals. They used to gather from many kilometres away to feast on the nuts for several weeks whenever there was a good crop.

Bunya cone fallen and broken apart

Cones on a bunya

The following morning we chose a walking track that didn’t go under too many of the bunyas! Darren let us off at Westcott parking area and we started off on the track to the Paradise parking area, through a great variety of vegetation.

We started off through a ‘bald,’ a grassy area of which there are several on the mountain

Grassy 'bald', Bunya Mountains National Park

Grass Trees, Bunya Mountains National Park

We were soon in rainforest, then came out into eucalypt  forest with some tall grass-trees that would have been around since before white settlement in Australia.

We stopped to admire good views across the Darling Downs from the clifftops, then continued on into more forest, with tall strangler figs and plenty of ferns and lianas.

Ferny forest floor on the walk towards Paradise, Bunya Mountains National Park

Car Park at Paradise, Bunya Mountains National Park

Lunch that day was at the Bunya Gallery Cafe, including a bunya salad

Bunya nut salad

A wedgetail eagle (Australia’s largest raptor) happened to pass by while we were dining. Other birds we had seen included king parrot, crimson rosella, superb fairy-wren, brown cuckoodove, brush turkey and various others.

‘Magical’ and ‘idyllic’ were two of the oft-repeated words from our guests during our stay, and we’re looking forward to our own next visit.

We didn’t have a tour booked for this weekend, so I accepted an invitation to attend the Vince O’Reilly Memorial talk – this year by botanist Dr Mike Olsen at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat on Saturday (yesterday) and talks by Dr Margaret Greenway and Barry Fitzpatrick at Eagleby Wetlands for World Wetlands Day.

Then we received a request for  one-person weekend wildlife camp, and this lady was only in Australia for one week (from Hong Kong) and really wanting to see some wildlife. She was happy to accept the uncommon routing for the weekend.

Our first stop was, as usual, Daisy Hill STate Forest and Koala Centre.

While walking I encouraged her to feel the texture of the sandpaper fig leaves, and some very alert ants rushed defensively out of the nest they had made between two of the leaves.

Ants on the alert at Daisy Hill

A little further on, amongst the paperbark tea0trees, we saw these large caterpillars, which appear to be one of the hawk moth species.

Caterpillars at Daisy Hill

After visiting the koalas in the centre (sadly we didn’t find any wild ones on our walk that day) we headed towards Canungra, making a sudden stop at Tamborine as we saw these impressive black-necked storks striding across the paddock

Black-necked storks in paddock between Tamborine and Canungra, Queensland

After a good meal at the Outpost, Canungra we continued up the mountain to O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat, where Denis took our guest walking in the rainforest while I attended Mike’s lecture, which recounted his rainforest experiences from his first-ever camping at the age of twelve, in a gully which was  inundated with rain that night, through teenage adventures, a PhD in botany and taking his own children walking and climbing.  He was lamenting that universities nowadays don’t teach enough basic natural history or encourage their students to get out and experience the forests firsthand.

Dr Mike Olsen (left) and Peter O'Reilley, before Mike's talk for the Vince O'Reilley Memorial Lecture

I then took our guest (who had already been on the treetop walk and botanic garden) to see a satin bowerbird’s bower (and the artist himself showed up as well) and we found red-necked pademelons grazing in the campground.

On to Kooralbyn, and the usual eastern grey kangaroos, whiptail wallabies and red-necked wallabies still grazing despite the development of more and more residential area around them nowadays.  We also drove past the Kooralbyn Resort, which has apparently been recently bought and is to be ‘restored to its former glory’, having languished for several years after the previous owner became bankrupt (owing a massive $60 million)

Kooralbyn Resort February 2012

Maybe it will be looking different soon (and more inviting!).

The platypus didn’t appear at their usual haunts at home, although they had been seen frequently over the past week. After sunset we headed out spotlighting. First stop – the campground toilets. The green treefrogs didn’t disappoint us here: two of them looked down on us from the entry wall, and high in a gum tree nearby sat a barn owl.

On our way to the NSW border we came across a carpet python lying on the road, so after photographing him we gently encouraged him to move into the safety of the long grass nearby

Carpet python on Lions Road

We doubled up the tour with taking some observations of animals along the Lions Road section (on the NSW side of the border) of the proposed CSG pipeline.  We are concerned about the effects on the wildlife if this construction goes ahead, but without ‘before’ recordings we’ll have nothing to compare the ‘after’ situation with, so on behalf of Scenic Rim Wildlife I’m recording what animals are present now.

This night (Saturday 4th February) we saw a sugar glider, a great barred frog and a beautiful bandybandy and heard several other frogs (emerald spotted tree-frog, sedge frog and several others). The bandybandy was crossing the road that leads down to the Border Loop lookout, and this appears to be the route to be taken by the pipeline from the valley, to join Lions Road, which it will then follow.  Many thousands of animals have been falling into the trenches dug for similar pipelines out west, and if this construction (very unpopular amongst residents of the area) goes ahead, we want the company to ensure that they will at least erect temporary wildlife-proof fences until everything is covered over again.

When we started to move the bandybandy off the road he threw himself into the defensive loops they use to startle their predators, which made it very easy to gently slip a small branch underneath him and lift him to the safety of the forest floor.

Bandybandy crossing the CSG pipeline route at the Border Loop, off Lions Road

Bandybandy throwing himself defensively into coils

See http://wildlifetourism.org.au/discussions/threats-to-australian-wildlife/coal-seam-gas-and-australian-wildlife/ for further concerns about impacts of CSG extraction on wildlife.

After dinner that night, Darren set up the spotting scope to view the moon’s craters, and took our guest spotlighting on our own property, seeing bandicoots, wallabies, barn owls and a brushtail possum, and our guest settled down for her second-ever night of camping (and first time ever in Australia)

On Sunday morning, after looking through the wildlife ecology centre and the butterfly trail and exploring a scrubby gully on the Araucaria property, we headed to Everyday’s Cafe for lunch and on to Beenleigh to view the fruitbat colony and Eagleby Wetlands for the World Wetlands Day talks, which I attended while Darren led a walk looking at pelicans, black swans and other waterbirds.

[photos coming soon]

Dr Margaret Greenway told us how the Ramsar Convention was formed many years ago in Iran, and how Australia was one of the 18 countries involved (now there are over 100) in the international agreements for conservation of wetland habitat.  Eagleby is part of a larger wetland area connected with southern Moreton Bay.  Barry Fitzpatrick spoke on how the current legislation on development and the emphasis on finding threatened species and then ways of mitigating threats to these is  not sufficient to protect the remaining, unreserved wetlands in this driest of all continents.

Not our usual schedule for a wildlife weekend camp, but our guest agreed it was a very interesting and rewarding one.

Lamington National Park birding trip

We had to gently explain to our beautiful guest that we do not feed the wildlife here

A  male regent bowerbird sitting on our picnic table and a dispute between a rosella and a bird of paradise were two of the memorable events at our first birding trip for 2012  to the O’Reilly’s section of  Lamington National Park.

Red-browed finches, crimson rosellas and king parrots awaited us when we first alighted from the tour vehicle, the finches seeking scraps from the parrot-feeding area.

Our walk through the forest to the treetopsproduced the usual three species of scrubwren (white-browed, yellow-throated and large-billed), brush turkey, eastern yellow robin  and logrunner. We could hear noisy pittas, black-faced monarchs and eastern whipbirds but failed to spot them.  We did also see lewin’s honeyeaters, brown thornbills, pied currawongs and satin bowerbirds.

In the botanic gardens section was either a female or an immature male paradise riflebird (the world’s only subtropical bird of paradise) having some kind of dispute with a crimson rosella in one of the trees.

rifledbird&rosella

The riflebird seemed to have the most formiddable ‘weapon’ but suddenly flew off to another group of trees.

Our picnic was keenly watched by several birds, and we were joined by the beautiful fellow in the picture above, but he finally got  the message that we weren’t feeding him.

A stroll down Wishing tree track to the little swinging bridge above the pretty gully of  treeferns revealed either a Bassian thrush or a russet-tailed thrush (we saw him to briefly to be sure), a red-legged pademelon (they don’t come out of the forest as often as the red-necked) and finally a glimpse of the monarch.

Bridge in ferny gully, Wishing Tree Track

Our birdlist for O’Reilly’s that day included  paradise riflebird, regent bowerbird, satin bowerbird, green catbird, eastern whipbird (heard), logrunner, yellow-throated scrubwren, white-browed scrubwren, largebilled scrubwren, brown thornbill, black-faced monarch, noisy pitta (heard), Lewin’s honeyeater, eastern spinebill, thrush (russet-tailed or Bassian), rufous fantail, red-browed finch, pied currawong, Australian magpie (in the open grassy area), Torresian crow (ditto), crimson rosella, king parrot, wonga pigeon, white-headed pigeon (heard), fan-tailed cuckoo (heard) and (of course) brush turkey.

We called at Eagleby Wetlands on our return trip to Brisbane, where we saw a pair of swans with young cygnets (they may look like ducklings but we agreed they were not ‘ugly’)

Swans and cygnets at Eagleby Wetlands January 2012

Other birds we saw that day at Eagleby included azure kingfisher sitting prominently on an exposed tea-tree branch above the water, greater egret, cattle egret, wood duck, hardhead duck, black duck, grey teal, purple swamphen, dusky moorhen, Eurasian coot, masked lapwing, little black cormorant, darter, rainbow lorikeet, crested pigeon, welcome swallow, noisy miner, magpielark and red-backed fairy-wren.

Walking is the only way you’ll visit this area – there are no roads, and I recall it as my first experience, in my early teens, of looking out across a landscape that is probably much the same as the Aboriginals viewed long before the coming of white explorers.

Last month Darren and I walked from Binna Burra to the circuit(altogether the walk is more of a “figure 9″ than a circuit, coming back along the stem on the return journey) with two keen bird photographers from USA and two students from Griffith University.

This is a great walk for variety of habitat.  It could be done in three hours on energetic walking, but then you would miss so much of what makes it special.

The routes starts in the warm subtropical rainforests of the Border Track from Binna Burra  but you see changes in the forest as you gradually (very gently) climb upwards (e.g. more treeferns), then start heading down again.

There is one little gully apparently kept just a bit cooler than the surrounding area by the water running through and the local wind pattern, so I was surprised when I first saw  Antarctic beech trees growing here – they are more typical of the cool, high-altitude rainforest

As the rock type changes from basalt to rhyolite you find yourself walking through open forest.

A little further you can either follow the sign that points towards Dave’s Creek or (as we often prefer) head to the left to do the circuit in the opposite direction.

Suddenly you come across Surprise Rock looming up from the forest – a good spot to sit for a mid-morning snack

The view from here is great, and that day we had some very active spinebills nearby feeding on banksia flowers

One part of the cliff gives a new meaning to “rockface” and seems awed by the view

Another 20 minutes’ walk brings you suddenly to a very resistant type of rhyolite which supports only mallee heath.

This day it was alive with spinebills and Lewin’s honeyeaters feasting on banksia nectar

There’s a bit of relentless uphill walking on the return journey, but not really steep, and it’s pleasant to sit for a while and take a break while surrounded by forest.  And certainly worth it to experience the variety of habitat and scenery on this route.

The cold mornings don’t make it feel like springtime just yet,but birds and other animals seem to be getting ready for the breeding season.  For winter-breeders, like the osprey and the lyrebird, it is already nearly over, but others are just stirring now.

Last week we arrived at Eagleby just in time to see a pair of very amorous swans.

In the rainforest along the Border Track near Binna Burra early this week, we heard a strange grunting and saw two female red-necked wallabies pursued by an excited male.

Somewhere in the distance the strange wailing Siamese-cat calls of the green catbirds was another sign of things stirring – you just don’t hear them much during winter.

Spotted pardalote at Daves Creek

Further down the track towards Daves Creek was a spotted pardalote which hopped around the shrubs in the open forest.  Usually you hear these gorgeous little birds all day and never see them, as they pursue insects way overhead in the canopy of eucalypts and other trees. Since this one stayed so long in the shrubs  I assume he (or she) was waiting for u to leave so eh could on with burrowing into a soil bank to make a nest (extraordinary to think of these tiny birds with their tiny bills doing this).

Eastern spinebills flitted around nearby, feasting on banksia nectar, every now and then a couple pairing off for a dash through the air, typical of honeyeaters in courtship mode.

Regent bowerbird at O'Relilys

The following day we visited another section of Lamington National Park, at O’Reilly’s Guest House.  Two weeks earlier we had searched unsuccessfully for bowerbirds, which generally head down into the valleys for winter (although we occasionally saw a female or young male that had stayed on the mountain during the cold months).  This time, I was just explaining to our guests that we were unlikely to see many, if any at all, when I saw a brilliant flash of yellow go past and sure enough, it was actually a male regent. Excitedly, I dashed over, still holding a handful of corn chips which were part of my rather unhealthy breakfast that morning (we had left Brisbane at 4.30am), and suddenly there were three regents on my arm stealing the chips.  I’m not sure whether the staff member who came out of the lodge with a handful of raisins believed me when I said the feeding had not been intentional (especially when some of the birds that came to him were diverted by the striking  colour of my chips and repeated the performance).  A little embarrassing, and I wanted to tell him that I had actually written and spoken publicly about not feeding the wrong foods to birds, and had written about this in a policy on tourist-wildlife interactions for Wildlife Tourism Australia, but he walked off before I had a chance to do so.

Satin bowerbirds

There were plenty of satin bowerbirds around also – here is one of the adult males with either an adult female or an immature male (difficult to tell until the males start changing colour with maturity – and they take a few years to do so).

We were told that one of the bowers near the lodge had been demolished by a brush turkey and the bowerbird had rebuilt it, but at 90 degrees to its original orientation.  Was this to somehow make it more difficult for the brush turkey?  Easier for the female? An artistic expression he thought more attractive?  A different bird doing it? Or he really didn’t care which way it faced?

satin bowerbird bower

For those who are not aware, the bower is the male’s clever and artistic little structure (which takes him some practice to perfect) to attract the female.  It is not a nest – she builds this and raises the brood on her own while he attracts more females to his bower.

We’re looking forward to more and more bird activity as spring really gets going.

International students travel with Araucaria Ecotours

Last week Darren and I  had fun taking a group of International Students Ambassadors (through Brisbane Marketing) on a day-tour last week, showing them a couple of places we visit on our 3-day Wildlife Overview tours and  our Tamborine Mountain day- tour.

Students aged from early twenties to mid-thirties, and from places as diverse as Bangladesh, Singapore, Mexico, China, Sri Lanka, France, Ecuador, India and Indonesia joined us for the day.

We started with a gentle bush-walk at Daisy Hill, through eucalypt and tea-tree forests, seeing a wild red-necked wallaby and finding scratch-marks of koalas but no wild koalas that day.

Two sleepy koalas awaited us in the Daisy Hill Koala Visitor Centre, and one managed to lift his head and look at everyone for perhaps a minute or two.

A walk to a waterfall was next on the agenda, followed by an excursion into the canopy at Skywalk on Tamborine Mountain, and a stroll through the tsall forest floor to giant trees and mountain streams.

Clouds were darkening and a light sprinkle fell, so we abandoned our idea of a picnic in the national park and headed to the shelters of Jubilee Park in Beaudesert to feast on corn wraps filled with salad, Camembert, other cheeses, olives, avocado, hummus and other goodies.

Our final destination for the day was Kooralbyn, where we found another red-necked wallaby and plenty of  whiptail wallabies (below)  and eastern grey kangaroos.

Darren and I were delighted to see it wasn’t just the kangaroos that were jumping …

Some of their comments and photos can be seen on the Araucaria Facbook